


Realizations

by PotatoQuinn



Series: Supergirl Drabbles [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: 2nd Point of View, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Fluff, but enjoy, i don't know where this came from, supercat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-11 07:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11143995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PotatoQuinn/pseuds/PotatoQuinn
Summary: Rao, she’s beautiful, especially with that brief flash of surprise you saw flicker across her eyes, followed by /something/, before she schooled her face into that smirk of hers. Something must be in your gaze, because she rolls her eyes and practically scoffs. “Yes, we’re going back to National City.” Like she knew what you wanted to ask, which isn’t surprising. Cat Grant probably knows you better than almost anyone else. You grin widely, letting your excitement show, and her smirk softens just a tiny bit. Carter is behind her, chattering away about school and traveling and how he’s so glad to be home now, and you hear it all, even as you focus solely on the woman in the window. Her eyes, green for the moment, flit back and forth between your own, and that something is back in her gaze. “Kara…”And you’re not surprised she knows. You’re not panicked; somehow knowing that she knows does the opposite. You’re relaxed, relieved even, and your own smile softens.-or-Kara starts to realize she has feelings for one Cat Grant, and I wrote a drabble-like one shot because reasons.





	Realizations

    There’s music playing from your iPod, a catchy, happy tune, and your sketchpad is open on your lap. The lines and smudges on the paper are taking shape, and you find yourself looking at a very specific smirk. You had thought you’d been just sketching random profiles, but apparently your fingers wanted to focus on a very real subject. Another few strokes, and you’re looking into eyes you knows as hazel, sometimes green, sometimes a honey brown, but always confident. Light, short hair, in waves and curls that frame a pair of cheekbones you had always wanted to brush your fingers across. You’re so focused on the face on your paper, you don’t hear your door open, don’t hear the footsteps that make their way to the kitchen. You don’t hear anything until, 

    “...potstickers and pizza!” You gasp and look up, seeing your sister standing at your counter with pizza boxes and bags of take-out stacked in front of her. “What?”

    You shake your head and smile, setting your sketchbook to the side. “Nothing. I didn’t hear you come in.”

    Alex raises her eyebrow, and you fiddle with the frame of your glasses, making a point to not look at the sketchbook lying on the coffee table. Instead, you go to the food and open a bag, taking a fold-out box and a pair of chopsticks out. “You didn’t hear me come in?” She sounds skeptical, which makes sense, since you can hear everything everywhere all the time, except for when you block it out or blow your powers out.

    You shake your head and stuff a potsticker in your mouth to avoid answering other than a statement. “I was distracted.” Not a lie, and you hope it satisfies her enough to let it go.

    It doesn’t, and she raises and brow before turning to the fridge and pulling out the root beer you keep in there just for her. “Distracted.”

    You stuff another couple potstickers in your mouth and nod, grabbing a bag of take-out. “Mmhmm.” You plop onto your couch (gently, of course, you can’t afford to buy a new one right now) and set the bag on the coffee table in front of you for easier access. You’ll get to the pizza later.

    Alex settles in next to you with a box of pizza and her root beer, pulling her feet up and sitting sideways to face you. You twist to face her too, raising your eyebrows for a second before you decide that would be weird and lower them again. “Distracted by what?”

    Oh Rao, she’s not gonna let it go. You shrug, mouth full of food, and try very hard to not look at the open sketchbook on the table. 

    Keyword: try.

    Alex follows your gaze and sits up, pulling the sketchbook out from under the take-out bag. “You were sketching Cat Grant?” 

    You feel your cheeks heat up and you reach out to snatch the book back, not moving as fast as you probably should have, because now she’s setting her pizza down and flipping through the pages, holding the book away from your reach. 

    You  _ could  _ just get up and get it back before she blinks, but you don’t, because as embarrassing as this is, you need to talk about this. You need to talk about how ever since your boss left to “dive”, you’ve felt empty, like a piece of yourself is missing. 

    You miss her, plain and simple. You’ve missed others before. You missed Eliza when you went off to college. You miss Jeremiah. You miss Lucy. You miss your mother and father, you miss Krypton so much. But this, this is something different. You don’t know how to explain it, even to yourself, but you miss Cat and Carter Grant so much it almost hurts. 

    You take your glasses off and set them on the coffee table, rubbing the bridge of your nose. 

    “Kara, what’s going on in that head of yours?” Alex hands you the sketchbook, open on the page you’d finished the day before. It’s Cat and Carter, grinning at you from the balcony of Cat’s Catco office. you’d only ever seen Cat grinning once, at something Carter had said, and the sight of the unbridled joy and love that she showed had take your breath away. You’d memorized the look, and it had sat in your mind like a drop of sunlight in the darkness that sometimes takes over. Until you had drawn it out yesterday on an impulse. Now it was in your mind and immortalized on paper, and it was your favorite sketch in the whole book.

    You hear the concern in your sister’s voice, with none of the judgement you had expected, so you spill. You tell her of the crush you’d had on Cat since you’d started working for her. You tell her how at first you thought it was just mere admiration and respect, the normal adoration that comes with working for a renowned celebrity (practically, anyway). You tell her how every time she and Carter had been in danger in the last year, your heart almost stopped. 

    She’s quiet as you talk, chewing on her pizza with that look on her face, the one you know means she’s thinking deeply about what you’re saying, really listening. She’s quiet when you finish, too, and you don’t mind, because at least now someone knows. You feel lighter for telling her, and you dig into another helping of potstickers. 

    That night ends after a mini marathon of Alex’s current favorite show, and she hugs you hard before she goes home to Maggie.

 

* * *

 

    It’s not exactly quiet up here in the clouds, but the loud noise is the wind rushing in your ears, so you take it. It’s better than the constant arguing from your neighbors, the barking of that dog the next block over, the crying from that poor baby in the neighborhood next to yours. Plus, the air feels good blowing through your hair, against your face, and you can almost feel the coldness on your skin. Almost.

    You’re flying as fast as you can as high as you can go, with the comms off and your ears tuned only to the wind rushing around you. Only there’s a constant thumping, just at the edge of your awareness. Two distinct thumpings, actually, now that you focus in on the sound. It takes you a couple of seconds to recognize the thumping as heartbeats. Well, now that you’re listening there’s a lot more than two, but it’s the two you  _ do _ recognize that you pay attention to. You bank to the left towards the heartbeats, your own speeding up. Because that’s Cat and Carter’s heartbeats, you’d know them anywhere!

    There’s a private jet just through the clouds, you find, and you risk a peek in a window. There’s Carter Grant, slumped on the couch with a tablet in his lap and his dark curls in his eyes. You think about tapping on the window for a moment, but decide against it; you’re not feeling that bold. You look around, noting the direction the jet is going, and you try not to hope when you realize it’s heading towards National City. 

    “Supergirl!” You hear, and you glance back in the window to see Carter right there, grinning excitedly. You open your hand, palm towards the boy, with a smile. Almost a wave, but not quite. “Mom, it’s Supergirl!” He turns back to yell over his shoulder, and then there she is.

    Her hair is an inch longer than it was before, and if you were breathing, your breath would have caught in your throat. Rao, she’s beautiful, especially with that brief flash of surprise you saw flicker across her eyes, followed by  _ something _ , before she schooled her face into that smirk of hers. Something must be in your gaze, because she rolls her eyes and practically scoffs. “Yes, we’re going back to National City.” Like she knew what you wanted to ask, which isn’t surprising. Cat Grant probably knows you better than almost anyone else. You grin widely, letting your excitement show, and her smirk softens just a tiny bit. Carter is behind her, chattering away about school and traveling and how he’s so glad to be home now, and you hear it all, even as you focus solely on the woman in the window. Her eyes, green for the moment, flit back and forth between your own, and that  _ something _ is back in her gaze. “Kara…”

    And you’re not surprised she knows. You’re not panicked; somehow knowing that she knows does the opposite. You’re relaxed, relieved even, and your own smile softens. You want to say something, but you know she can’t hear you. You mouth her name, and a ‘welcome back’, and hope that a part of what you’re feeling is showing in your eyes. 

    You back away after a moment, feeling so much better than you had before, and you throw a hand up in a wave before flying away. You’re excited, you’re relieved, and a little part of you is anxious, because what if you’re misreading things, what if that wasn’t a  _ good  _ kind of surprise, what if-

 

* * *

 

    You find out later that day, after you hauled in some slimy  _ creature _ that had been trying to contaminate the drinking water of National City, that your worries were for nothing. You’re in civilian clothes when you see her again, with Carter by her side like he should be. You’re wearing one of your favorite cardigans, paired with a comfy pair of jeans, because this cardigan always made you feel safe and warm. Eliza got you this cardigan for Christmas last year, and somehow wearing it always kept your nerves at bay. You have sneakers on, too, and you had hastily tied your hair up into a ponytail to get it out of your eyes.

    She has that look of  _ something  _ in her eyes again, and Carter lights up when he sees you. He bolts forward, and then you’re surrounded by a gangly teenager’s arms, a few inches taller than when you hugged him last. You remember to stumble back a bit, because even if he knows too, you don’t want him to get hurt by smashing into you so suddenly. You hug him around his shoulders as he babbles about seeing Supergirl from the jet window and how “that was  _ so  _ cool, Kara! How did you know we were there?”

    You can feel your sister’s eyes on you, because she had tracked you down to check on you, since you’d gone radio silent nearly three hours ago. You know she can hear what Carter’s saying, and you can’t bring yourself to care, because his mother is smiling at you with such a tender look as you hug him to you. You meet Cat’s gaze and smile so wide, you’re still so excited that they’re back, that she’s back. You have just the presence of mind to answer Carter, to turn you focus on solely him for a few minutes. “I heard your heartbeats.”

    “You can  _ do _ that? I mean, of  _ course  _ you can, but you could tell it was us  _ just from our heartbeats?” _ He sounds so awed by the possibility, and your smile softens again, your cheeks heat up again, and you flit your gaze to Cat’s for a second.

    “Yeah,” you answer, your voice breathless even to your own ears. Cat’s listening to you as rapt as Carter is, obviously curious and just as awed. “I can always distinguish the heartbeats of those I lo- those I care about from others.”

    You see a flicker in her eyes again, and you have to look away or risk burning up from the inside. You look down at Carter instead, and there’s a twinkle in his eye that makes you a bit nervous, but you just smile. 

    Alex frowns in the corner of your eye, and you listen in as J’onn fills her in on another alien threat, and you’re tempted to swear. She looks at you again, and she knows you heard, so you have to smile at the Grants with as much apology as you can manage. “I’ll catch up with you guys later? There’s a- a thing-”

    “Go go, we’ll be fine. Call me when you’re done?” Cat makes it sound like a question, but you know it’s a demand. She needs to know you’re safe, you can understand that, so you nod and hug Carter again. “Go on then, Supergirl. Chop chop.”

    You smile again, and with a blur, you’re in your suit and flying towards L-Corp.

 

* * *

 

    The battle is hard, this humanoid alien is adamant on destroying the city. Literally, their only goal seems to be to wreck every building, turn them into rubble. They’re strong, insanely so, and it takes about ten minutes of throwing yourself in front of them for them to realize they’ll have to go through you to get to the city. You ache, there’s a cut (a  _ cut! _ ) on your arm, and you can feel something sticky on your face. This is abnormal and weird, and you have no idea how this thing has managed to damage your normally impenetrable skin. It hurts like that time you fell out of your window when you were small, on Krypton, but you push on. You can’t allow this thing to destroy the city you have come to love, you can’t allow it to hurt anyone here. 

    You try leading it out of the city limits, towards the desert, but whenever you manage to get it’s attention, it swats at you and you’re thrown threw a couple blocks of buildings. Then they return to throwing their clenched fists, each as large as one of the DEO’s SUVs, at the nearest structure. The first time this happens, you let out a long string of expletives in Kryptonian, every word you ever heard you father or uncle or aunt say that your mother scolded them for. 

    You decide then to match them punch-for-punch, throwing in as many other moves in that your sister taught you at the DEO that you can. You try icing them, but they just smash through with their massive fists. You move as fast as you can around them, trying to confuse them, and it works for a moment. Until they get frustrated and just start throwing things in your general direction, so you have to stop. You try heat vision, and it seems to just irritate them. So you concentrate harder, focus on protecting the city and her people. Focus on keeping Alex and Maggie safe. J’onn, Winn, James, Lucy, Lena, Vasquez. Cat and Carter. 

    Cat and Carter seem to be your fuel, so you fill your mind with every memory you can of them. When you first met Cat Grant, at your interview. When you first met Carter, having come to Catco to have lunch with his mother one Saturday. Then more recent memories, when she named Supergirl, you, and you had argued with her. Every instance she had called you “Kara” instead of “Kiera”. Everytime she had said something that had just, struck you and inspired you. 

    More and more memories flooded your mind, and you focused on the feelings they left behind as you moved on. The admiration, the respect. The fierce protectiveness that bubbled deep in your chest. The love that you had yet to name out loud, but still felt with every fiber of your being.

    Fueled by these positive emotions instead of the anger you had used on Non, your heat vision intensifies stronger than ever. The alien lets out a high pitched squeal that just got louder as you continue your attack, into something tortured. The sound grates on your ears, and something tickles down the sides of your head, but you keep on, because there were people to protect, to keep safe. With a yell of your own, hands thrown back behind you for leverage, you intensify the rays even farther.

    They last longer than you thought they would, skin smoking and smoldering by the time they finally collapse to the pavement in a pile of burnt limbs. You gasp for breath, your throat sore from the use of your voice, and your knees buckle. Alex is at your side in seconds, pushing your hair away from your face and whispering in your ear. Maggie’s there too, and you grasp at their sleeves. “Cat, call Cat…”

    “Don’t worry, Little Danvers, I got you.” Maggie pulls her phone out and dials. “Miss Grant? Kara’s okay. Yeah, she’ll call you herself when she can.” You blink, confused for a second. You can’t hear who’s on the other side of the conversation, and it takes you a minute to realize you’ve blown out your powers again. 

    You take a second to wonder how Maggie got Cat’s number before your vision darkens and you pass out.

 

* * *

 

    When you wake up, it’s blissfully quiet. Just the slight hum of the sun lamp you’re under, and you don’t focus to find any other sounds because this silence is so so welcome. You keep your eyes closed and breathe evenly, until you hear a voice.

    “I know you’re awake, Supergirl, I heard your breathing change.”

    You open your eyes and blink away the light, much dimmer now that you’re  _ normal _ . Practically  _ human. _ You turn your head to see Cat sitting in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs, glasses perched on her nose and book in her hands. It’s rare to see her without her phone or tablet, so you watch for a moment, enraptured at the sight of someone so formidable, someone who usually held such poise, relaxing with a book. You can’t be completely sure, what with your eyesight no longer enhanced (at least for the moment), but you think you see a bit of redness around her eyes. 

    You manage to smile anyway. “Hey.” Your throat hurts, and it feels like there’s sandpaper scraping against the sides.

    She glances at you, but keeps her book open. She blinks rapidly, like something was in her eye, before she focuses back on the book. “How are you feeling? Agent Scully said you blew out your powers.”

    It hits you then, that Cat Grant is in the DEO, sitting at your bedside, while you recover from overexerting your powers. You blink slowly, feel a smile creeping over your lips, and soon you’re grinning. “Yeah, I did. I’m okay.” That’s all you manage before the scratching in your throat causes you to cough, which causes your eyes to tear up. Rao, that hurts!

    “Easy, easy.” There’s a glass of water pressed to your lips and warm hands helping you sit up, and you can feel her warmth! You marvel at it for a moment, as you sip the water, because usually your own skin is so hot everyone else feels cool to the touch. 

    You lean into her, sighing softly after you’ve had enough to drink for the moment. You’re quiet, lost in your thoughts. Because you missed this woman so much while she was gone, you hadn’t really noticed. Well, you knew you missed her, but now, after pondering on it for awhile, you’ve discovered it was more than missing your boss or missing your friend. 

    There’s a moment, then, when you’re just content to sit there, with her, and you allow yourself this time. She hasn’t pushed you away, and even though you’re a bit anxious (what if she doesn’t like me? What if I’m bothering her? What if-), you stay put. You know, you  _ know,  _ that if she didn’t want to be exactly right here, she wouldn’t be. So you push your anxious thoughts away and wrap your arms around the woman you just might be in love with. 

    She sighs, pressing herself closer to her (Cat Grant did not  _ snuggle _ ), and you notice that she’s trembling just the slightest. It occurs to you then, that she might have been more worried than she let on. Which makes sense, because Cat didn’t really show her emotions very openly. Still, you feel bad. You should have known, listened closer to her heartbeat, watched her face,  _ something. _ You tighten your hold just a tiny bit and press her face to the side of her head near her ear. “I’m sorry,” you whisper, and she grips you tighter. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

    She scoffs, but even that sounds shaky. “I wasn’t worried, I knew you could take care of yourself.” You push away and look down at her, staying silent, keeping eye contact. She clenches her jaw and nods once, then buries her face in your neck. She doesn’t say anything, but you figure that nod was her admitting that she really  _ had  _ been worried. 

    You almost start to be careful holding her, and then you remember that you don’t have super strength right now, so you sigh into the embrace and hold her closer. When you speak, it’s a mere mumble. “So, did you find what you were looking for?” 

    She stays silent, and you think she’s going to ignore you. But then she shakes her head. “I discovered that what I had been searching for was in front of me all along, until I left. So I came back.”

    You’re still, because you’re scared that if you move too much she’ll pull away. “What had you been searching for?”

    She does pull back, but not very far. She lets go, but only to cup your cheeks. Her thumbs swipe at the tears you hadn’t noticed as her eyes flicker back and forth between your own, and you can’t read her gaze. She seems to have trouble finding the words to use, which surprises you somewhat. She pulls your face closer and rests her forehead against yours. Then she finally parts those lips. “You.”

    Her lips taste like M&Ms, bottled water, and something unique, and they’re so so soft. They fit perfectly against yours, sliding into them like they’re home. You’re thankful you’re still on the bed, you’re pretty sure your knees would have given out. 

    She pulls away after a moment, the kiss too long and too short all at once. Her nose glides against yours, and you open your eyes, no memory of closing them in the first place. You smile, your vision blurry, and you close your eyes again. “I was searching for you too.”

    You can’t tell her yet that you love her, it’s too soon. But you figured she gets the message as you kiss her again, pouring everything you’re feeling into the gesture.


End file.
